{"444661":{"#nid":"444661","#data":{"type":"external_news","title":"Louisville, Kentucky develops one of the first urban heat-adaptation plans, lead by SCaRP professor Brian Stone","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAs Earth\u0027s climate changes over the coming decades, global warming\u0026nbsp;will hit metropolitan areas especially hard\u0026nbsp;because their buildings and pavements readily absorb sunlight and raise local temperatures, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlthough cool roofs and green roofs can strongly curb temperatures at the tops of buildings, they do not always yield benefits at the street level, and they may trigger unwanted effects, such as reducing rainfall in some places.\u0026nbsp;On top of that, it is unclear whether the limited programmes currently in place will have a measurable effect on temperature\u2014and citizen health\u2014and whether cities will expand their efforts enough to produce results. \u201cIf you\u0027re just putting green roofs on city hall and schools, it\u0027s not going to move the needle,\u201d says Brian Stone Jr, an urban scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDespite all of the heat-related risks that cities face in the future, few have put heat-management plans in place. Louisville in Kentucky is one: it will soon become the first major US city to develop an urban heat-adaptation plan, says Stone, who is leading the project. The effort is driven by necessity. Louisville has the fastest warming urban heat island in the United States, and temperatures there have climbed by more than 4 \u00b0C since 1961. Part of the problem is that the city has lost 54,000 trees per year to insects, ice storms and lack of care.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStone is now collecting the baseline data that most cities lacked before embracing cooling steps. He is travelling around Louisville measuring tree cover, finding hot spots and identifying areas with vulnerable residents. The next step is to create a blueprint that combines cool roofs, green roofs, tree plantings and cool paving materials that could change the fate of the city\u0027s most at-risk residents. Stone is starting with modest but realistic assumptions in his modelling: the conversion of just 100 buildings to green roofs, for example. At the same time, the city hopes to increase its number of trees.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"28044","created_gmt":"2015-09-04 09:00:37","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 02:27:41","author":"Jessie Brandon","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","publication":"work family interactions","field_article_url":"","publication_url":"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/how-cities-can-beat-the-heat\/","dateline":{"date":"2015-08-27T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-08-27T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"1224","name":"School of City \u0026 Regional Planning"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"1349","name":"Brian Stone"},{"id":"791","name":"Global Warming"},{"id":"832","name":"greenhouse gas"},{"id":"56681","name":"heat island"},{"id":"32991","name":"louisville"},{"id":"168875","name":"stone"},{"id":"33091","name":"urban climate lab"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}